


already gone

by andsmile



Series: hard things break [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 4x18, Angst, Archie Andrews Loves Veronica Lodge, Archie Andrews Needs a Hug, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Varchie!Centric, and periodt, archie deserves a point of view, emotional cheating, explores barchie a little but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23954071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andsmile/pseuds/andsmile
Summary: I didn't come here to hurt you, but I can't stop.or,an exploration of feelings on archie's pov (4x18).
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper/Veronica Lodge, Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge
Series: hard things break [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1742893
Comments: 37
Kudos: 71





	already gone

**Author's Note:**

> I have so much to say so I wrote six thousand words about it. Archie Andrews deserved his point of view to be explored and I took the matter into my own hands, trying to make in-character sense of this absolutely out-of-character storyline. Shame on these writers. I wrote this in two days and they had months and couldn't give me *one* glimpse of Archie's mind that wasn't used to prop up Betty.
> 
> That being said, this fic isn't happy. I also took the liberty of adding some scenes and modifying others, but I tried to keep the essence. This explores BA too, so you've been warned, although I think I tried to make a statement. I also wrote Betty in a better light, in my opinion, than the shitfest they've been trying to do in the show.
> 
> Trigger warnings for: disassociation, PTSD, emotional cheating, abandonment issues, and all the things that come with loving Archie Andrews.
> 
> Thanks Katiekins for proof-reading it to me. Much love! Recommended song: Sleeping At Last - Already Gone.
> 
> And, by the way, A&V forever.

“and suddenly you’re left alone with your body that can’t love you, and your will that can’t save you.”

(rainer maria rilke)

.

.

.

Sometimes, when Archie looks in the mirror, he wonders who’s looking back at him.

It’s a question that is there when he wakes up in the morning with dark circles under his eyes for another night he spent tossing and turning. It’s there when he needs to wash his face after playing the wrong lyrics to the wrong song in his guitar. It’s there in the middle of the night after he finally falls asleep only to wake up from one of many nightmares.

He has a collection of them, at this point. There’s the one that ends with the bear claws ripping his chest open, the one that ends with a gunshot piercing through the silence, or fighting against too many people at once, trying to breathe. These are the ones that wake him up with a _bang_ , his heart slamming against his ribs, his lungs malfunctioning.

There are other ones, though. Quiet, creeping, haunting ones. The sound of Geraldine’s violin. The tears from everyone he’s ever hurt turning into a sea and swallowing him whole. His father bleeding in his arms and saying _Arch_ one last time. These nightmares don’t make him jump scared. They just make him open his eyes and stare at the ceiling for the remaining hours of the night. _It’s just a nightmare_ , he repeats to himself as if he’s counting sheep. _You saved him_.

(He’s gone anyway.)

In the mirror, he sees someone, someone older than the last memory he has of _himself_ —late October at Pop’s, washing his hands, Veronica’s smile and scent on his tongue.

_Who are you? Where did you come from?_

His reflection doesn’t know how to answer.

.

.

.

Archie kisses Betty four times in his life: when they’re eight and he gives her a peck before falling to his knees and asking her to marry him; when they’re sixteen and their hearts are bleeding; when eighteen and they’re pretending, so people believe that stupid Jughead plan; when they’re eighteen and they’re not pretending, singing a song in his garage.

He can’t remember how the first three times felt.

He does remember the fourth, though, her hand on the back of his neck and the way her lips on his tasted like vanilla. They kissed for one minute before she pulled away and looked at him like she recognized something.

“Arch.”

He took a step back and ran a hand through his hair, muttering _oh fuck_ under his breath, not sure of what to think. He looked at Betty and Betty looked away, saying _I better go_ and leaving so fast, it was like nothing ever happened, like she was never there.

Veronica shows up with cupcakes and apologies and promises; kisses that taste like her dark berry lipstick, a hint of teeth as usual. The scar on his chest hurts like it’s being ripped open again and he’s got the words on the tip of his tongue, _Betty and I kissed_ , but she doesn’t let him say them and he’s so relieved that he’s not going to lose her tonight, that he shuts up.

Later, after the performance, he stays at La Bonne Nuit and waits for her to close the cashier.

Archie watches Veronica talking on the phone with someone, bossing them around, so sure of herself, so beautiful. He thinks about finding her in this same place, a few months ago, brown-haired and battered and bruised. He thinks about the tears that came with her forgiveness, the way they made love against the counter she’s leaning on, how she kissed his scars. He thinks about seeing her with Reggie here too, a picture-perfect pairing, Reggie’s hand on her lower back as if saying _I got you_ , Archie’s throat tight as if not saying _I love you_.

 _Why did you come back to me?_ he asks himself in that moment. He never really understood why—all through the summer and the year, tucked under her blankets, buried deep inside her, feeling her smiles and tongue and swallowing her moans, he asked himself _why did you forgive me, why do you love me,_ but he never asked her. He just accepted, indulged in her love, found something in her sparkling eyes that he couldn’t find anywhere else.

_Betty and I kissed._

He somehow wishes she’d stayed with Reggie. He wishes she’d never given him the power of breaking her heart, even if he begged for it and promised he wouldn’t, that she was _it_ , that they were _now and forever_.

“This is going to take a while, Archiekins,” she says with a smile, blocking the phone with her hand. “It’s okay if you want to go, you look tired.”

 _I want to stay and tell you the truth_ , he almost says, but because there’s a part of him that’s _terrified_ of telling the truth, before he can help, he’s walking towards her and kissing her forehead, closing his eyes as she continues to chat away about something business related. “Call you tomorrow,” it’s what he whispers.

At home, he doesn’t look in the mirror when he washes his face.

.

.

.

Archie barely sleeps. His dreams are a mix of blonde and black hair, salty tears, blood in his hands. He wakes up when it’s still dark outside, his throat on fire like he’d been screaming. He looks out of his window and sees Betty’s lights turned off and her curtains closed. He wonders if she’s with Jughead, if she told him, if she was able to stop thinking. If her stomach is hurting.

His mother is at Brooke’s but even if she were at home, it’d be so easy to slip away. She never truly paid attention. He goes to the community center and wastes himself away in the gym for hours, almost as if he’s trying to dissolve himself in sweat.

His phone rings, Veronica’s picture showing up on his screen—a picture he took before the last football game of the season, his personal cheerleader in a blue skirt—and it startles him. _She found out_ , that’s the first thing in his mind, and he’s reluctant to answer and have everything fall apart through the phone _again_.

One missed call turns into one new message that he reads with shaky hands: **_hey sleepyhead. turns out i have to be away for the weekend. maple rum stuff, we’re going up to the border to negotiate with some new buyers. i’ll call you again later. x_**

Archie throws up in the shower, makes another mess that he’ll have to clean up.

.

.

.

His house is still empty when he comes back. He’s jittery like he hasn’t been in a long time. He grabs his guitar, the only thing that ever seemed to quiet his brain when everything else fails and sits on his bed to strum chords.

_Betty and I kissed._

Through different sounds, his brain won’t let him forget, images of what happened flooding his mind.

_I cheated on Veronica._

Archie sets the guitar down, rubs his exhausted eyes. He gets up, frustrated, peeps through the curtains, bile rising up his throat again. Archie gets his phone and finally finds it in him the courage for texting Veronica back, **_come back soon, i love you._**

He does. He loves her so much. He’s bled for her, fought for her, ran to her. She held him up, she _saved_ him, she needed him. He loves her so immensely he can’t pinpoint where it ends and where it begins. _Then why_ , he keeps asking himself, _why did Betty and I kiss_.

Veronica doesn’t answer his text right away. Archie repeats himself the question a million times as he watches the day darkening outside the window and, when Betty turns on her lights, he wonders if she has the answer. She always had the answers to a lot of his problems, from simple math equations to intricate mysteries.

 _It’s just Betty_ , he tells himself before grabbing his phone again, asking if she can meet him. It’s just Betty. It’s just the girl he’s been connected with since they were eight, the first girl he loved even though it was always a different kind of love. It’s just Betty, who’s always had all the answers.

**_the bunker? in 30._ **

.

.

.

Seeing Betty’s familiar face is overwhelmingly nice after the last hours of turmoil. She looks like she did when they were kids, pink shirt under a denim dress, hands curled into fists, a habit that she’s always had, and he never understood why.

“Why did you want to meet?” she asks him. Archie sits on the bed, takes a deep breath.

“We kissed,” he says out loud for the first time. It’s a weight lifted from his shoulders and settling into his stomach. He hasn’t eaten all day. Betty twirls her ponytail on her fingers, almost bashful. “I—”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t have to mean anything if we don’t want it to mean anything.”

“Okay.” Archie agrees easily. He feels better already, having someone to talk to. Betty takes a deep breath and sits by his side on the bed, the mattress jolting with the weight of her body.

“We can’t do anything more than this,” Betty says, her voice firm and bossy like it always has been.

Archie feels lightheaded, and the warmth of the bunker doesn’t help either. He remembers falling through a hole into this place, all battered and bruised, bleeding. He remembers being stuck in it for days turning into weeks, burning. He remembers bringing Jughead food, cleaning the wound on his head. Compared to those times, _this_ , now, _feels nice_.

“But it’s nice, though, isn’t it?”

There’s silence after that. She uncurls her hands, placing them on the mattress.

“Archie, I know we kissed, but I love Jughead.”

“I love him too, Betty,” he breathes out. He hadn’t possibly thought yet about all the possibilities, all the ways this could explode them. He sat with Jughead once, before it all, before the third and the fourth kisses, and listened to how they were living in a powder keg. “And I love Veronica.”

_So fucking much._

“I love Veronica too,” she echoes his sentiments, her voice smaller. Archie shakes his head. _I love you too, Betty_ , he wants to say, but he knows it’s not the time. There have always been many things he felt like telling her, but never could, never got around to. “So, we can’t do this.”

He thinks about coming back home, alone, and to the place inside his head that is so full of doubts. He thinks about the image in the mirror that he can’t recognize. “We’re just hanging out,” he promises, reaching out to place his hand on top of hers, holding it like he used to when they were just kids. “This is nice.”

“Yeah.”

.

.

.

They walk back to Elm Street together, her hands back into fists, and his shoved in his pockets. They say a quick goodbye at his door, and he watches as she walks towards her home, towards Jughead. Archie feels better now, relieved. Maybe they can walk back from it. Maybe it won’t be an unsalvageable mess between the four of them.

He walks into his house and the smell of food makes him realize he hasn’t eaten all day. His mother is back, stirring something at the stove, and it still makes his heart beat differently when he catches her at home, like she used to be before he turned thirteen and she put both her hands on his shoulder to tell him, _I’m moving to Chicago, honey. I want you to come with me._

“Hey, honey. Are you hungry?” Mary asks. Archie feels his cheeks heating up, embarrassed for some reason he can’t pinpoint. He says yes, sitting at the table. “How was your weekend after all?”

The question pushes him back to an uneasiness that he thought was left in the bunker.

 _Betty and I kissed._ His mind reminds him. _I cheated on Veronica_.

“It was alright,” he lies and questions how his mother would react if he said the truth. If she’d pity him, if she’d be disgusted by him, if she’d think back on the sad days of her failed marriage, if she’d look at him that way she does sometimes, something between patronizing and disappointed and _oh, Archie_.

His father would see through him right away.

But his father isn’t here anymore, and Mary was never so good at reading him.

“Brooke asked me if you thought about sending the application to the academy. I know it’s not an easy decision, but Veronica agreed with me that it might be a good opportunity, so—”

Archie can’t pay attention after his mom says Veronica’s name. She’s friends with his mother, she helps with the center—also financially. She’s inserted in every single aspect of his life in a way. She’s helping him with his grades, she’s vouching for him with Mr. Honey so he can graduate.

Veronica has always been a focal point.

“—I know things might be a little harder with her in New York and you in Annapolis, but since you guys were going to try long distance anyway—”

“Mom,” Archie rubs the back of his neck, feeling it warm. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

She looks over at him.

_Oh, Archie._

.

.

.

There are no new messages from Veronica when he goes to bed; she hasn’t even seen his last text. Archie asks himself if she’s safe, if she needs something, if she misses him, and then asks himself if he has any rights of wanting her to.

Another nightmare wakes him up after two hours of sleep. He can’t remember his dream. There are lyrics in his brain when he wakes up, something that had never happened since the Geraldine days.

 _You make me wanna be stronger than I am_.

He’s not sure what it means, but it echoes through his brain until he turns on his lamp and reaches for a pencil and his lyrics notebook, the one full of lyrics about Veronica. He writes the words down and realizes, mortified, that the image on his mind is Betty.

There’s a message from Ronnie when he wakes up again, drenched with cold sweat.

**_lover, i'm sorry for not answering you, signal here sucks. will come back on monday. love you heaps._ **

He doesn’t avoid the mirror this time, but it’s still a stranger looking back at him.

.

.

.

For some stupid reason, some reason he can’t even begin to understand, he avoids Veronica on Monday morning. He can’t face her, can’t look at her, he’s ashamed and weak, he looks like utter shit and she will know, she’ll see right through him, like she’s done a million times before.

_You and Betty… kissed?_

He thinks about talking to someone about it.

Jughead would be the first option, but of course he _can’t_ go there— _you? cheated on Veronica? with who?_ —and Reggie is off-limits too because what if he saw an opportunity? What if he wasn’t over Ronnie?—and Kevin could turn it into gossip and his father is six feet under and God, Archie misses him—so, in the end, his footsteps take him to the Blue and Gold, where the only person who gets how he feels right now is.

Betty has a series of yearbook pictures spread over the table. “What are you doing here, Arch?”

“Can I help you with the yearbook?” he asks and begs with his eyes that she’ll let him. Maybe they can rationalize this together, maybe they can reach a conclusion together, because his mind is on a loop. What are they going to do?

_Why did we kiss?_

She nibbles on her lower lip and Archie thinks it’s weird that he remembers how it felt doing the same. He hates that awareness and hates himself but isn’t strong enough to hate Betty. She’s not to blame, even though she was there, even though she kissed or kissed back or whatever that was.

“Okay,” Betty says in a sigh, like she’d just given up on something. “You can go through the Bulldogs’ pictures.”

He feels relieved that he can stay, that he doesn’t have to crawl out of his skin out there, so he smiles briefly at her when he sits down. He’s been in the Blue and Gold only two or three times, one of them with Veronica, and she was looking through old yearbooks searching for clues on a serial killer and he was looking at her, wondering if she’d ever love him.

It’s different than skimming through pictures from simpler times, football games and pep rallies, with a girl that laid down her love for him when they were fifteen.

“I like this one,” he says, smiling at the picture he found. It’s from when Betty was still a freshman—it’s her and Polly hugging, right before the game, years prior to when the Farm took her away indefinitely. There’s a shade of sadness in Betty’s smile. “Shit, I—”

“It’s okay, Arch. I miss these days, too. Everything was easier.” She breathes out.

There’s a picture of Jason Blossom in the pile, young and alive and not a violated corpse burning in the river, with the jersey that now belongs to Archie, who never really understood why he had to die so young. He was so talented, he was going to so many places, different from Archie, who was going nowhere.

It was easier before he died, before that gunshot in July two days after Archie turned sixteen. When it was him and Betty sharing a booth at Pop’s, laughing about whatever was on TV earlier, waiting for Jughead to show up.

“Yeah.” Archie puts the picture back on the table. She’s looking down when he looks at her. He can’t ignore the question in his head, the one that he can’t find an answer to, the one he couldn’t ask in the bunker. “Betty… I can’t stop thinking about this. Why did we kiss?”

She shrugs and her eyes are red-rimmed when she stares back at him. “I don’t know. Maybe it was just a mistake, I don’t know. I carried a torch for you for a long time, Arch, and sometimes I just—” she stops talking and shrugs again. “I don’t know.”

It doesn’t help him sleep, knowing that there are questions Betty doesn’t have the answer to.

.

.

.

Veronica is so busy with Cheryl and Red & Raven that he manages to avoid her on Tuesday too, but it starts to _hurt_. He misses her and wants her, and he hates missing her because it brings him back to what he thinks as the darkest moment of his life—missing Veronica so bad that he pointed a gun to her father’s head and almost pulled the trigger, just because she no longer believed he wouldn’t do it. Just to prove a point.

_If you can kill me, I can kill him._

Archie avoids her because he doesn’t want to _kill her_. Not that he’d ever have this power. She would survive anything. She was the strongest person he knew; she would _never_ be weak like he was and kiss another guy for reasons still unknown.

He stares at her last message, **_cheryl and i are disagreeing on some stuff but it’ll be ok. miss you. can’t wait for this week to end._**

He doesn’t answer because it makes him sick, just imagining typing out the truth: _Betty and I kissed. I cheated on you. I’ve talked to her twice about it and I didn’t talk to you, once. She makes it easier to understand, to accept that I did this. She did it too, you know? We both did and you did nothing to deserve this._

Archie can’t sleep again, and into the long dark hours of the night, he thinks that maybe he should stay with Betty. Wouldn’t it be easier? Wouldn’t it be nice? Childhood best friends to lovers like in a movie, two stupid people who kissed at the wrong time, two stupid people who maybe belonged together because they were horrible to perfectly good people, his and hers best friends. She was a good kisser, too. Sure, his body wasn’t set ablaze, his head didn’t go quiet. Betty isn’t Veronica but she is _Betty_ and she can’t kill him.

It would probably be the safest of bets. It would probably be the least shocking news of all times: Betty and Archie, endgame.

As it gets later, and his eyes are still opened, his mind starts spiraling into a different darkness. He cheated on Veronica. Whether it is today or tomorrow or _one day_ , this is going to come out—from his lips, from Betty’s lips, damn, maybe even Jughead’s—and there’s no way they can walk back from this. No way she’ll forgive him, no way she’ll want to stay with him. He’s going to lose her for good, _forever_ , no matter how much he screams and fights, no matter how many tears he cries or songs he writes. It’s over. It’s already over, even if she doesn’t know yet. It’s over because he’s hurting from missing her _again_ and it’s over because he’s going to miss her forever when she finds out.

Archie gets up and starts hitting his punching bag repeatedly and bare-handed, until his knuckles are bleeding. He embraces the pain, _wants it_ , craves it. He deserves it. He punches the bag until he gives out.

.

.

.

Wednesday somehow finds him again in the Blue and Gold, looking at pictures with Betty. His bruised knuckles catch her attention, but she doesn’t say anything about it, because she probably understands.

There’s a photo from his first Variety Show performance that feels like a punch in the stomach. He remembers his father’s eyes in the crowd, how shiny and proud they were. He would’ve given anything to have his father watch the one from last week but, then again, would he have felt proud? If he knew what happened right before?

“Are you writing songs again?” Betty asks quietly after Archie spends a minute too long looking at the picture. He sets it down, nodding slowly.

“I never really stopped. It’s some sort of journal, to me,” Archie says. He thinks about the most recent lyrics prototype he has in his notebook, the ones that are about her and this mess they’ve gotten themselves into. “It helps me figure things out.”

His bruises probably don’t make a strong case when he flexes his fingers. When he looks up, her eyes are hurt and shiny, and Archie wonders if he’s done something wrong, because it was one of his specialties, to make people cry. Before he opens his mouth and asks what’s wrong, Betty uncurls one of her palms on top of the table.

There are four nail indentations across her palm, fresh and raw, blood under her fingernails. Archie feels his heart beating faster. There’s an inkling for him to reach out for her hand, a hand that he’s held so many times without noticing any of it, but he stays put. “ _Betty._ ”

(He doesn’t understand what kind of darkness this is. He doesn’t know—he’ll never know—that Betty showed that display of imperfection to Jughead years ago, and that Jughead kissed her bruises and took care of them until they healed, just like she’ll probably never know that Veronica stained her hands with his blood more times than he could count.)

She nods pointedly at his knuckles and then closes her hand again, hiding it under the table. “I guess we both can use some figuring out.”

.

.

.

Veronica doesn’t text the entire day. It’s a relief if only because he forgets, for a minute, about all the things he isn’t telling her.

In his room, he looks down at his hands for a long time before taking his notebook and writing another part of his lyrics. He thinks about the cuts in Betty’s hands and the bruises on his knuckles. Thinks about how they weren’t there when they were little, before the world around them fucked it all up.

_She’s not made for this world, and neither am I._

He keeps on writing, keeps on playing until the song is ready. It’s been a while since he wrote one so fast—tracing back to the Geraldine days, again. Normally, lately, his most personal lyrics are a long, carefully crafted process.

**_can we meet later? i wanna show you something._ **

Archie texts. It doesn’t take Betty long to reply.

**_i’ll come over at 5.30. i have to be home by dinner._ **

.

.

.

It’s five-thirty sharp when Betty lets himself into his door. Archie has his guitar on his lap, and she has her hands on her back pockets. “What is it?”

“I wrote a song for you,” Archie says. Betty smiles a little, sitting at his desk, and he wonders if it makes her heart flutter, if it makes her happy, if it makes her want to keep her hands open. It would if they were ten—he remembers how happy she’d get whenever they listened to records together. “Can I show you?”

_I’d love to hear them. Your songs!_

Betty nods, crossing her legs and waiting for him to start to play. He’s serenaded Veronica so many times—early mornings to wake her up, late nights to lure her to sleep, lazy afternoons with her lying on her belly, her raven hair falling over her naked back. He’s always felt good about it, never ashamed, not once, not even when his lyrics delved deeper into his soul.

His cheeks burn when he starts to sing, this time. He’s not sure of what’s his goal with this song: it’s a mix of the thoughts in his head that he couldn’t vocalize to anyone but her, given the circumstances.

Archie doesn’t even get to the chorus. Before the bridge even starts, Betty places her hand over his, on top of his purple knuckles. He looks up, confused, and she shakes her head. Eyes full of tears of a _dèja-vu_.

“We can’t keep doing this,” she says. Archie frowns, confused by what she means. “ _This_. Us. It’s… I _love_ Jughead. And you love Veronica, don’t you?”

He can’t really understand why one thing is related to the other. _Not-loving_ Veronica shouldn’t even be a question. He’s not asking for Betty to stop loving Jughead either, so he shakes his head, frustrated. “Why did we kiss, Betty?” he asks again. “I can’t— I’m trying to understand, but—”

“Arch, everything is changing in the next few weeks, and you and I… feel safe with each other. We always have.” She closes her eyes. Some tears start streaming down her face. Archie thinks about safety and what it means. He felt safe with his parents, in this house, but his mother left him, and his father died. He felt safe around Geraldine and sometimes he thinks he shouldn’t have. He definitely feels safe with Veronica—a different kind of safe. A quiet safe, a place to rest his head, his bones, a place where nothing can hurt him ( _she_ can hurt him).

Betty must see the question in his eyes. “I don’t wanna hurt, or lose, Jughead.”

“I don’t wanna lose or hurt Veronica either.” Archie breathes out. But he knows it’s a ridiculous hope—he’s hurt her already. He’s going to lose her. It’s only a matter of time until Jughead and Veronica find out and it’s going to be them again, two kids in parallel houses looking through their windows, trying to hold on to something. They might’ve as well start now if this is how it’s going to go.

Maybe that’s the kind of safety Betty is referring to.

She shakes her head. Archie swallows—this would probably be a good time to kiss her again and try to find out why he did it the first (fourth) time, but he can’t do it. He doesn’t want to.

“Whatever this is, or was, it’s over now.” She wipes her tears away. In true fashion, Archie tried to make her smile, and ended up making her cry.

He sets his guitar down and swallows. “Are we going to tell them?” his voice drops a notch, his shoulders heavy again. He knows he _should_ tell Veronica, knows there’s probably no other way than doing the right thing, but— “Are you going to tell him?”

Betty sniffs. “No. No one knows what happened but you and me, so— we shouldn’t. I’m going to New Haven very soon and, _no_ ,” she sets her jaw. Archie nods slowly, eyes downcast. She’s probably right. “I’m sorry, Arch. Maybe a couple of years ago, I’d—”

He swallows. “Don’t be sorry,” he says. He wishes he could tell her that a couple of years ago it wouldn’t make any difference, because he was trying to swim to the shore of the darkest, deepest waters, and there was only one lighthouse guiding him. “I want you to be happy, Betty.”

“I want you to be happy too, Arch.” She dries one more tear. “So much.”

.

.

.

Long after Betty is gone, he still has the guitar on his lap, and he’s still strumming his guitar, if only because the song is passable. It tears him up still not knowing the answer, not knowing the motivation for his dumb actions, because _if_ Veronica ever finds out—she’ll see right through him, there’s no way she won’t, and he can’t lie to her face if she asks what’s wrong, why is he so tired, why is he so upset, why isn’t he eating—he wanted to be able to tell her a reason. To justify himself. To make her grasp onto the last thread of hope.

“Sounds like you wrote this one to someone special,” his mom shows up by the door, kind of out of the blue. Archie feels caught already. “Has Veronica heard it yet?”

His mom has seen him play for Ronnie in the living room, has heard her giving out her input on his arrangements.

“No, not yet,” he lies again, because what else could he say? _it was for Betty. I cheated on Veronica, mom. I’m weak. I’m weak, I’m impulsive, and indecisive just like you used to call dad, and Veronica is going to find out and leave me just like you left him. Are you going to leave me again?_

Mary smiles and is about to turn around when Archie calls her, handing her the papers about the naval academy that has been lying on his desk for a while now. He’d been waiting for Veronica to come back so they could talk about it again, so they could stop stalling to talk about their future. “I know I’ve been flaky, but I’m ready to get serious about this,” he says. “I’m ready for a fresh start.”

His mom seems pleased and she can’t see he’s a fraud, a cheater, a weak liar. She can’t see that he’s always, _I’m gonna be good now, I’m gonna be real, I’m gonna honor dad, I’m gonna be honest,_ and in the end, he’s just back where he’s started, just a stupid kid with his head all over the place.

When Mary is out of sight, he punches the bag again, ripping open the healing bruises.

.

.

.

Archie doesn’t go to school on Thursday. Mary argues with him, frustrated and upset, _oh, Archie, I thought you were getting serious about your future_ , but he doesn’t get up. He can’t. It’s dawning on him, all of it, the sleepless nights, the foggy mornings in the graveyard speaking to a tombstone, Betty’s presence being the least confusing thing through all of it, the weight of the decisions he’s made.

He lies on his bed for a few hours. There’s a headache behind his eyes when he pushes himself to get up. In the bathroom sink, he washes his hands after brushing his teeth, and the lukewarm water makes his bruises sting.

He doesn’t look in the mirror.

Back in his room, he looks out his curtains, and Betty’s are completely shut for the first time since that day in the garage. His gaze is dragged down, to the pictures of them on his wall. He takes the pictures down. Part of him wants to rip them, to throw them in the trash, because they’re just _evidence_ , proof that he one day looked at them and second-guessed things he should’ve never second-guessed, but ultimately, he doesn’t. He keeps them in a drawer and so he won’t mourn the death of yet another simple thing.

“Handsome, hey.”

Archie turns around. Veronica is walking into his room like she always did, like it belonged to her. She doesn’t knock because she doesn’t think he’d be hiding something. Because she trusts him and loves him. Because he looked her in the eye and said she was the only girl for him—now, and forever—and then he kissed her best friend and doesn’t even have a concrete reason or explanation.

Maybe he’s just an asshole. A fuckboy, like Cheryl called him once. He has zero loyalty. Veronica said it once, and he asked her to believe otherwise.

She should’ve never believed him.

“Ronnie,” his voice is way smaller than he thought it would be, ripped out of his throat. “Hey.” She smiles and leaves her handbag on his dresser and comes closer, wrapping her arms around him.

It hurts. It hurts all over when she hugs him, it hurts when he hugs her back, it’s excruciatingly painful when he leans down and presses his face on her neck, feeling the scent of her hair, his favorite scent in the world. _how did I do this, how, how, how, how._

“Oh, I missed you. Your mom called, said you’re not feeling well,” she says, her fingers on the back of his head, lightly scratching his scalp. Archie can’t help it. He holds her closer and he knows he’s crying. He does, he feels the warm tears out of his eyes and into her hair. She probably feels his body trembling because she tightens her grip. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

_Betty and I kissed._

_I cheated on you._

_I applied to the academy._

_You’re better off without me._

_I love you._

“What is it? Is it your dad?” Veronica sounds worried. Archie can’t say anything he needs to say, he can’t, so he nods and lies again, because yes, maybe it’s his dad. Maybe he can blame all of his mistakes on his dad dying. Maybe he can blame them on his mom leaving. On Veronica’s father for making them fight, leading him to the garage that day. There’s so much stuff he can blame—it allows him to be a coward. Veronica pulls back, holds his face in her hands. “I’m here now.”

He leans in, resting his forehead against hers, his eyes closed. _Say you love me,_ he wants to ask. _Say you’ll love me no matter what_ , but how could she love him after what he’s done? He’s disgusting. She deserves better than his selfishness, than his stupidity.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks instead, more tears falling from his eyes, and Veronica chuckles. He feels her smile close to his lips.

“What kind of question is that?” she says and before he can answer, she’s kissing him.

Archie thinks he should feel so disgusted with himself, to let himself be wanted and kissed by Veronica after the last few days, but it’s bigger than him, it’s bigger than his body, how much he needs her and wants her and how much he will fight to redeem himself. He’ll fight. He’ll learn how to save people instead of killing them. He’ll learn how to make them smile instead of cry.

He grabs her thighs and carries her to bed, pressing her into his unmade sheets, and Veronica wraps her legs around his waist, her blue skirt hiking up. She’s out of breath when she breaks the kiss. Archie buries his head in her neck again, to breathe her and kiss her and he’ll do it, he’ll repent, he’ll do anything if he can have her like this for a little longer.

“I love you,” Archie says into her skin. “I love you, Ronnie, so much, I—”

He’s crying again.

Veronica unwraps her legs and pulls him closer, getting him to lie on her chest. Her fingers run through his hair slowly. “I love you, Archiekins,” she kisses the top of his head. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

.

.

.

(it’s not going to be okay.

in a few weeks from now, archie and veronica will dance to _unchained melody_ at prom. it’ll be the soundtrack of them falling apart—even if, at that moment, archie won’t see it. he’ll get comfortable with the lie and he'll forget about the guilt that makes him throw up and not sleep, forget because veronica will be with him and he’ll honestly believe she’ll heal him. that they’ll have time and he’ll be the best boyfriend ever; he’ll be worthy of her love. he’ll visit her every week, he’ll take a train or a plane, he’ll drive to her door. he’ll learn and he’ll grow up and ask her to marry him, he’ll buy the ring she likes.

but then, not long after the song is over, jughead will get a tape, and he’ll show veronica what’s on that tape. and it’ll be the match on fire, the final blow, the thing that’ll explode them.

he’ll cry and kneel and beg. he’ll repeat _i love you, i'm sorry,_ until his throat is dry. _i can fix it. we can get through this._

 _stand up,_ she’ll say. he will. he'll look her in the eye, and he’ll try again.

 _say something,_ he’ll plead, _say anything_.

she _will_ say something, and it’ll be the final twist of the knife in his chest.

 _i was right to be afraid of love_.

 _i should have never let myself go there with you._ )

_._


End file.
